


Arrowhead

by quicksparrows



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, calm down satan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's one of the few mothers to die first. [Doomed timeline.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrowhead

Cherche's body is broken.

He doesn’t need to inspect her to know – any fall from that height would do that. Had Minerva not cushioned her fall, it would have been much worse, but rolling ten yards from her mount with an arrowhead and some inches of its broken shaft embedded in her side does its own damage. She is writhing on the ground, eyes screwed shut, clutching her own side.

The battle rages on around them, but they could be miles away for all Frederick notices right now.

“Cherche,” he calls, and she looks at him. He’s not sure if decades of training has prepared him to be so calm in this moment, or if he’s just in shock of the sight of her.

Frederick crouches in the mud, water seeping between the joints of his armor and the rain beating down on his pauldrons with a rhythmic plink-plink. He slips one arm around her shoulders and the other under her knees and lifts her. She sags oddly in his arms, hips limp like a rag doll.

"Cherche," he says, tightly, as if his voice might give out. "My love, hold on. We must retreat, your injuries—"

She blinks sluggishly, and for a moment seems stunned.

"Minerva," she says. "I cannot leave Minerva."

With some difficulty, Frederick lifts her and stands, and she lets out a pained gasp as he does. Her fall has covered in her mud, and it is difficult to tell how bad the bleed is or where else might be injured, but he has no time to wait. She could die in his arms, but she at least stands a chance if they retreat. She'd most certainly die in the mud.

"Minerva!" Cherche cries.

Frederick casts a glance over his shoulder at the wyvern, but he moves away just the same. 

"She's alive," he says. It's true, but he's not sure for how much longer — she doesn't move beyond the labored rise and fall of her side, and one wing rests at an unnatural angle. 

"I need to say goodbye," Cherche cries, and she tries to clutch a piece of his breastplate, but her fingers spasm.

"There will be no goodbyes!" Frederick insists, moving faster. Cherche makes a noise of agony, something deep and strangled and feral. She arches her back and he has to grip her best he can to keep from dropping her. "For gods' sake!"

Frederick moves as swiftly as he can, footing poor and muscles straining. He has lifted her many times, but seldom when she is so thoroughly armored. He worries he won't be fast enough, he worries he will be struck down by a Risen on his path, and he is worried mere determination is not enough.

She must not die.

The support line is fifty yards away. He locks eyes with Maribelle, who kicks her horse into a sprint to meet them. They say nothing — Frederick boosts Cherche up into Maribelle's arms despite her scream of agony, and despite her slight, unarmored frame, Maribelle holds Cherche firmly in her lap. For one blistering second, he and Maribelle look at each other, and when he sees the look in her eyes, Frederick has never felt so vulnerable. He gives the horse a shove and they take off at a run.

"Go!" he shouts. 

They vanish from his view quickly, over the hills.

He dares glance over his shoulder, back to the battlefield. The Risen are swarming. He watches Cordelia and her gryphon tangle with a Risen in mid-air, the great beasts snapping and screaming as they grapple each other, blood spraying from the slash of talons, their riders barely seated. He watches Libra cleave a Risen in two only to find more poised to strike in succession. He watches one of the manaketes belch a great ball of blue magic before taking an arrow to the side, her great wings jerking and her tail lashing hard enough to take out another Risen.

He looks for his Lord, only to realize his Lord Chrom has been missing in action for six months now. 

A coldness swells in his chest. He has been released from his duty, presuming Lord Chrom’s death, and yet tradition would hold his duty still lies on the battlefield. 

And yet… his wife is dying.

He stands there in shock, watching as Cordelia spears the Risen’s steed in the throat to pry their mounts apart mid-air, and then he turns back.

He runs for the medic’s camp. Those five hundred yards feel like a marathon, like a march into his own grave.

When he arrives, bursting through the tent flap, he casts his eyes over a dozen broken, wounded soldiers before he sees a sliver of Maribelle behind a partition. Frederick strides that way, and before he can get around the corner, she looks up at him.

She shakes her head.

“Sit with her,” she says, touching a light hand to the cold steel of his vambrace. “I am so sorry, dear Frederick. She won’t be long.”

Frederick knows that. He’s known it since she fell, even if he’s told himself numerous times now that there could be a chance she would survive.

He averts his eyes and presses past Maribelle, who does not complain at being shoved aside. Her mouth is set in a hard line, but her eyes are glassy, and she steps out and closes the partition behind them.

And there’s Cherche, laid out on the cot. Maribelle has removed her breastplate and cut away Cherche’s padded shirt, and Frederick can see the arrow shaft still protruding from her side. If that were all, she would stand a chance at living, he’s sure, but the fall from Minerva has done worse. Frederick may not know the intricacies of anatomy, but he knows a broken body when he sees one.

Cherche’s eyes are half-lidded, her breathing shallow. 

“Is the battle over?” she asks.

“Yes, love,” Frederick says. He loathes to lie, but he would not have her send him away, or remind him that his duty is to Ylisse first and foremost. “We carried the day.”

“Good,” she says, and she manages a tiny smile. She lifts a hand and reaches for him, and he takes her hand in his and wraps his fingers around hers tightly. She sighs, and her voice is quiet: “It’s not so terrible, Frederick. I’ve fulfilled my duty.”

Frederick feels a few hot tears slip down his cheeks. He could remind her of her duty as wife to her husband, and her duty as mother to their son, but there’s no use pleading with the dying. 

“It is most certainly terrible on my heart,” he says. “Are you in pain?”

But she doesn’t say anything, she just closes her eyes.

Frederick runs his other hand over her forehead, brushing her bangs back to lay a kiss there. Her skin is pallid already, and her long hair is tangled with mud. He had always admired Cherche and her fortitude, smiling even as she brought down death on her enemies, but death is not nearly so lovely when she is victim to it.

“No,” she murmurs, finally.

And then she’s gone, taking much of Frederick’s heart with her.

 

-

 

“Your hair is getting long,” she says, running a finger along the shell of his ear, and Frederick immediately inclines his head away from her invading touch. (Funny that he even let her get close enough in the first place!)

“Cherche,” he says, in a warning tone. 

“What?” Cherche replies, smiling, and rounds the table to sit across from him. To his left, Chrom looks up, fork pausing in mid-air.

“I told him that this morning,” Chrom says around a mouthful of chicken.

True, it has been getting long. He can feel it brush the back of his collar when he dresses, and given how prohibitive his armor can be in movement, it drives him mad to not be able to itch or brush it aside, but he’d rather wear it longer than usual than let—

“I think he’s just afraid to let Tharja touch it again,” Chrom adds.

Frederick sighs.

“Oh? What was that about?” Cherche asks.

Frederick can feel Cherche’s ankle brushing his calf under the table, slow and deliberate. He has half a mind to reach under and catch her, but he chooses to ignore her first.

“It was getting long and Tharja offered to cut it in exchange for a break in training,” Chrom explains. “You know how Frederick is, he needs his hair trimmed and his clothes pressed and armor polished or he’s just not happy.”

“I suppose it was too much to ask to indulge in that one creature comfort,” Cherche says. She almost coos it, leaning one cheek against her hand and looking at him through half-lidded eyes. “Poor man, he only wanted to look his best on the battlefield.”

“Poor man indeed,” Chrom agrees.

“If you carry on like this, milord,” Frederick says, “you’ll end up with more food on your lap than in your belly.”

Chrom acknowledges Frederick by swallowing his mouthful, only to immediately take another bite.

“I could do it,” Cherche offers, gracious as could be. Her ankle ends up between Frederick’s knees, her foot sliding against the inside of his trouser leg. Frederick dares to reach under the table as subtly as can be, but she slips from his reach too easily.

“I’m sure he’d like that,” Chrom says, nodding. “I mean, no one else around camp does a stylish job.”

“Some of us are too old for the carefree tousle,” Frederick notes.

“Old!” Cherche exclaims. She slides her foot along his leg again, and Frederick manages to catch her by the ankle this time. Cherche doesn’t even miss a beat: “I always considered you so virile.”

“Am I not virile?”

Frederick smiles, leaning across the table as far as he can without pressing his shirt into his dinnerplate. He fixes his eyes on Cherche, unblinking, his fingers still firmly wrapped around her ankle. She stares him down unfazed, and for a lingering moment they share a mutual energy, something potent and certainly virile.

“At the dinner table? Frederick, that’s unlike you,” Chrom says, laughing.

Frederick lets Cherche go immediately, and Cherche laughs, too.

“You lose your virility fast,” she teases, which only makes Chrom laugh more.

“Oh, nonsense,” Frederick says, but he’s flushed in the face at having gotten carried away for even an instant.

 

 

-

 

“Father?”

Frederick looks down at his son, who in the past year has grown enough that it’s not very far down to look anymore. His eighteenth birthday had been last week. Gerome looks back with his mother’s eyes, which gives Frederick pause.

“Yes?” he says.

“We should go,” Gerome replies. There’s a sigh on his voice, but like his father, he is steeled. “This place will only remind us of terrible things.”

Frederick looks back to the gravestone with a heaviness, and he feels it that much more after the weightlessness of remembering days long past.

“You’re right,” Frederick says, and he momentarily bows his head to his lady before he starts back down the hill.


End file.
